Building trustworthy AI in healthcare: collaborative efforts for Europe

How to deploy trustworthy AI in healthcare was the topic of the day when clinicians, innovators, representatives from industry and academia met with decision-makers and funders at an event highlighting real-world experiences of AI development and implementation in healthcare – and the SME perspective on available services. The event also showcased new models of co-creation between healthcare providers and industry, to lay the foundation for more ethical, effective, and collaborative AI innovation across Europe.

Driving the day’s momentum were two EU-backed initiatives, both committed to empowering small and medium-sized enterprises in their AI innovation journey by offering real-world testing environments across Europe, access to health data, and regulatory support.

“Both the TEF-Health and the Health Data Sweden, HDS, initiatives are geared towards meeting the goal of bringing trustworthy AI to the market. We are supporting AI development for healthcare, boosting AI innovation by making testing available across Europe, and also mitigating risks by guiding on ethical and legal perspectives as well as questions related to validation and certification”, said Daniel Lundqvist, Leader of the Swedish TEF-Health node, Professor in Neuroimaging and Director of the Centre for Imaging Research at Karolinska Institutet.

TEF-Health stands for Testing and Experimentation Facility for Health AI and Robotics and started 2023 with the aim of contributing to make the EU a fertile and prosperous ground for bringing AI from the lab to the market and ultimately to the benefit of patients. TEF-Health provides a European network of 52 partners in 9 countries offering services within expertise consulting, real world testing, environment and health data services. For SME:s this means that you can also get your AI solution validated for new markets.

Sebastiaan Meijer, Professor of Healthcare Logistics at KTH Royal Institute of Technology reflected on the current status for AI deployment in healthcare.

“I am proud to say that we in Sweden are the first to succeed in integrating the services of two different EU initiatives TEF-Health and EDIH into a coherent package of experts and consulting, health data services, testing facilities and methods and education and training. This will be beneficial for SMEs and Public Sector organisations”, said Sebastiaan Meijer, Project Coordinator, Health Data Sweden.

From the perspective of small and medium-sized enterprises, navigating the landscape of AI development in healthcare can be complex. Several companies shared their experiences of using TEF-Health and Health Data Sweden services, highlighting both the opportunities and challenges of accessing the right support at the right time.

“When we reached out to HDS we got a contact person who helped to start to map our knowledge gaps. Through HDS we got in touch with the academic research group PATH – Participatory eHealth and health data. Together, we conducted the survey “What matters in care” together with an academic group, and it further mapped needs and knowledge gaps for co-developed patient involvement processes. Today, we have everything up and running for a patient council and are also participating in a research collaboration, where we are just about to submit a research paper. To me, the collaborative effort between industry and academia is the only way forward”, said Louise Lind, Global R&D Lead at Mindler.

The event highlighted how collaborative efforts between SMEs, academia and healthcare providers are key to turning AI potential into impact for patients. By sharing experiences, challenges, and success stories, the event showed how initiatives like TEF-Health and Health Data Sweden help to bridge the gap between innovation and implementation, ensuring that AI solutions are not only technically robust but also trusted and relevant for patients and clinicians across Europe.

“Deploying trustworthy AI in healthcare is not just a technical challenge, it is just as important to build trust and confidence among clinicians, patients, and our society at large. Opportunities to meet like today are crucial as we bring together the people who can turn AI potential into real-world impact. That is necessary to contribute to patient benefit across Europe, and ultimately globally”, said Julie Bianchi, TEF-Health Sweden and SciLifeLab.  

The event Deploying Trustworthy AI in Healthcare – Validation and Adoption was jointly organized by TEF-Health, Karolinska Institutet, RISE, SciLifeLab, CIR, HDS, Karolinska Innovations AB, Karolinska Institutet Science Park AB and funded by the EU and VINNOVA. The Swedish TEF-Health node is led by Karolinska Institutet (KI) together with RISE. KI is represented by the Centre for AI Innovation, SciLifeLab and Centre for Imaging Research.